The slow death of citizen science - BOINC

[CuriousBread]

For the uninitiated. BOINC, or Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is a system that allows for scientists to tap into compute resources of ordinary people. If a researcher requires vast computational resources to, say, simulate a galaxy or detect gravitational waves or find cure to cancer they can create work units that will be sent to volunteers’ computers, calculated by them, and returned to the project’s database.

 

There's a whole host of different projects you can donate your idle computing power to. However since 2007, the number of volunteers have been in slow decline from 700k at its peak to less than 60k and going down.

 

I feel like it'd be a shame to let something unequivocally constructive to the human species to die a slow death like this so I've decided to start a post. 

Give it a shot. Covid19 maybe behind us now, but beyond Folding@Home there are other alternatives if you want to contribute your idle computing power!

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

[Eigenvektor]

8 minutes ago, CuriousBread said:

There's a whole host of different projects you can donate your idle computing power to. However since 2007, the number of volunteers have been in slow decline from 700k at its peak to less than 60k and going down.

I think there's a very simple reason for this: Lots of countries are currently experiencing a recession and energy prices are as high as they've ever been. Many people simply can't afford to run their computer at 100% usage for days/weeks/months.

[BiotechBen]

15 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

I think there's a very simple reason for this: Lots of countries are currently experiencing a recession and energy prices are as high as they've ever been. Many people simply can't afford to run their computer at 100% usage for days/weeks/months.

As of right now, with temps in the high 80's (~30C) it would be a battle between the AC and the compute. In the winter, it was marginally more affordable to use the Compute waste heat to set my apartment than the electric baseboard heat. And that metric was with cheap 12¢/kwh electricity. 

[Eigenvektor]

4 minutes ago, BiotechBen said:

As of right now, with temps in the high 80's (~30C) it would be a battle between the AC and the compute. In the winter, it was marginally more affordable to use the Compute waste heat to set my apartment than the electric baseboard heat. And that metric was with cheap 12¢/kwh electricity. 

True summer heat is another reason not to run the computer 24/7. Though summer has taken a pause around here for the time being. But it's still too warm to require heating and at around 0.5€/kWh electricity is less affordable than more common alternatives around here (gas/oil), even in winter.

[Mxyzptlk]

My limitation is the power usage. It’s not EU prices, but California pricing isn’t much better being .38 at non peak time.  

[dogwitch]

power bill and the heat here

. other then main pc. and tv.

nothing else is running. but for a limited time of day ac.

[Gorgon]

An issue I've observed is very little progress migrating projects from relatively inefficient CPUs to much more efficient GPUs. Given the choice these days with the currently expensive energy prices of running 100-200W on a CPU versus the same power on a GPU I'll choose the GPU project as it can do much more work.

 

Granted there is quite a lot of effort required to port projects from CPUs to GPUs and some projects even then would still require calculations not available or limited on GPUs (FP32 & 64 come to mind).

[MSMSMSM]

There are a variety of factors which imo may have resulted in reduced interest over time

• Crypto.
  
  At least some of the contributors have invested significant computational resources into these projects because of projects like GridCoin (which have long usernames) and CureCoin (which require team membership)
   

  Quote

  When prompted, create a username with the format: friendlyname_GRC_CPID. Friendlyname can be any name you want, GRC must remain in the middle and be capitalized, CPID should be your CPID

  Source: https://gridcoin.us/guides/foldingathome.htm
   

  Quote

  Then, navigate back to the folding@home configuration page (which popped up after installation) and fill out your username (exactly as shown in the email), “224497” for the team number, and then paste your passkey into the passkey box. Click “Save”.

  Source: https://curecoin.net/knowledge-base/folding-for-curecoin/how-do-i-start-folding-for-curecoin-quick/
  
  These projects are no longer what they used to be and the market speaks for itself (CoinMarketCap price graphs for CureCoin and GridCoin) not to mention the issues with GridCoin that were reported (I don't know if they were truly resolved, I'm not too intimately familiar with either codebases)
  
  I suspect some of the more profiteering members came and went.
   

• Rising cost of living.
  
  An increased cost of consumer electronics (esp. "competitive" hardware) and geopolitical flux mean that, you have the same number on your cheque even though your currency value has sunken (or even gone kaput entirely if you're really unfortunate to be in certain parts of the globe), while costs for everything else go up. Not as much disposable income, not as much to put into hobbies (though this could be utter nonsense, I mean, have you seen what some mechanical keyboard sets cost?). This makes small and medium contributors less likely to get involved as they upgrade to more budget options as it just isn't feasible to.
  
  Current international conflict and its effects on energy prices are just the most recent reason why people wouldn't find the idea of keeping their computer on for more than they have to kosher.
   

• Competition.
  
  The points and ranking system is supposed to make people compete and feel good about the contributions they make but... it can also have the opposite effect, discouraging people from bothering because, they feel like they're just putting a drop in the ocean.
  
  It took me months, if not a year of my laptop to reach 30M points in F@H (my desktop would've taken years). Two weeks with an RTX4070? Now I'm at 60M. That card isn't cheap and more importantly, it isn't mine. It is part of a build that I'm doing as a gift and I had it folding after I ran out of synthetic stress tests to run until it was the day to go and deliver it to them (sans any BOINC, F@H or other distributed computer software on it). I will let them know I folded on it.
  
  Stuff like that can make your 50k from 12h of CPU contribution feel like a fraction of a drop in the ocean, which is demoralizing. The folks at BOINC have started to realize it and are working on Science United (see their UI/UX goals)
   

• Making this stuff actually work.
  
  F@H's client is based on Python 2.x, which has been long deprecated. RHEL 9 doesn't come with Python 2 and community repos don't have it either. I tried installing it through various means but eventually found this Snapcraft package which works beautifully with NVIDIA CUDA but has problems with AMD ROCm OpenCL.
  
  Three days I've been trying to get this stuff to work to little avail.
  
  But that's just it working, the UI/UX is primitive, calling it an advanced control doesn't excuse not even giving it even minor scrutiny from someone who does UI/UX design, the web UI for F@H more than makes up for it (also big ups this extension that makes it even better) but the beginner mode for BOINC is so atrocious that I run to the advanced mode, which I don't expect Joe Joneson Average to figure out.
  
  If it's not plug and play, not unobtrusive, most people won't bother. For example, most people are used to OAuth based sign-ins (even though I hate it and never use a site that doesn't also offer the traditional email+password login method). Where's that?
   

• Normalization
  
  The number of people who sign up don't equal to the number of daily active users on the platform. Maybe we are normalizing and should re-calibrate how much engagement is too little engagement.